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Municipalities of Dutch Lower Saxony
The municipalities of Dutch Lower Saxony are the lowest form of local government in the Saxonian state of Dutch Lower Saxony, one level beneath the provinces. There are a total of 699 municipalities in the state. The status and political nature of municipalities greatly differ between and even within provinces. A municipality may be a large city, like Groningen, with nearly 200,000 inhabitants, or it may be merely a hamlet with fewer than 10 people. All municipalities have an official name, which may not be the same as the single community or largest community within the municipality. Though originally it was often the case that each village was its own municipality, nowadays after several mergers one will more often find that multiple communities can be found within a single municipal territory. The entirety of the state is divided into municipalities, even uninhabited areas and bodies of water. This can in some occasions create the illusion that a municipality is very large, even though most of its territory consists of water or uninhabited nature. General characteristics A municipality is a general layer of local government subordinate to a province, and as such cannot cross provincial borders. They are similar to in the or to in . Number of municipalities Though the number of municipalities has dwindled somewhat throughout the decades, the total number relative to the size of the state is still rather high, at 699 in total. That being said, the number of municipalities relative per province greatly varies. Though municipal mergers have in some cases formed relatively larger municipalities (e.g., Verenigde Landen van Raalte, Ambt Enschede, or Staverden), in many situations where mergers took place the municipalities are still very small or geographically unconventional (e.g. Lange Lage Weides, which was formed by a merger of seven very small municipalities, but is still considered too small a municipality with 380 inhabitants). Because municipal mergers tend to be encouraged from the provincial rather than the state or national level, some provinces have high numbers of merged municipalities, as can be seen in Salland, or rather low numbers of merged municipalities, as can be seen in Frisia. Size of municipalities Municipalities can greatly differ in size, both in area and number of inhabitants. This can be attributed to a large number of variables, but the most common reason for these differences is that certain municipalities managed to evade being annexed by or merged with other municipalities. Another frequent cause for these differences is formed by geographic separation, which for instance keeps the Wadden Islands' municipalities from merging. In some cases in the past, larger municipalities have been broken up into smaller ones to keep one single municipality from dominating the province. The most infamous example of this was the break-up of the municipality of Groot-Emmen, which formed the controversial municipality of Barge. There have been calls to divide up the Verenigde Landen van Raalte in the same way, although the States of Salland's official position is that they prefer other municipalities to merge rather than to break up the most successful merger of their province. Municipal politics Miscellaneous facts Most and least populous municipalities *Groningen is the most populous municipality with 187,772 inhabitants as of 2016. *The municipalities with the fewest inhabitants in Dutch Lower Saxony are: **Leons and Koehoal, both with 25 inhabitants **Dykshoek with 16 inhabitants **'t Stift with 2 inhabitants. Largest and smallest municipal territories *Verenigde Landen van Raalte is the largest municipality with a total area of 717.1 km². *'t Stift is, again, the smallest municipality with a total area of 0.12 km². Shortest and longest municipal names *The shortest name of a municipality is Ie in Frisia, with two letters. *The longest name of a municipality is De Velden van Grolloo, Schoonloo, Ekehaar, Amen, Nooitgedacht, Papenvoort, Marwijksoord, Vredeheim, Eldersloo, Eleveld, Geelbroek, Anreep en Schieven with 119 characters, not counting spaces and commas. Notable municipalities *Barge, which consists of six separate exclaves scattered across the general greater Emmen region; *Landen van Borger en Schoonoord, a long but narrow municipality; *Ambt Enschede, a municipality consisting of the rural outskirts of Stad Enschede, which has its municipal hall in the city of Enschede proper; *Rozendaal, practically a neighbourhood of Velp and Arnhem, yet its own separate, small municipality, inhabited by only millionaires; *Ugchelen, of which the urban area has grown into Apeldoorn, yet it remains independent; *Noorddijk, which has become a very thinly stretched municipality surrounding the city of Groningen after much of its land was annexed by the latter; *Tranendal, which literally translates into "Valley of Tears", a small municipality between Westerlee and Winschoten which got its name from the which reportedly took place on its location in 1568. Lists of municipalities per province *List of municipalities in Amersfoort *List of municipalities in Drenthe *List of municipalities in Frisia *List of municipalities in Graafschap De Achterhoek *List of municipalities in Groningen *List of municipalities in Salland *List of municipalities in the Stellingwerven *List of municipalities in Twente *List of municipalities in the Veluwe *List of municipalities in the Wadden Islands Category:Municipalities of Dutch Lower Saxony